Information Literacy in Higher Education: A Sociocultural Perspective (SpringerBriefs in Education)

This book presents an innovative theoretical and methodological approach to study information literacy in higher education contexts. While mainstream studies tend to see information literacy as a technical and universal process, this book proposes a theoretical and methodological framework to study information literacy from a sociocultural perspective, highlighting the importance of the social and cultural contexts in which information literacy develops.

This situated approach demands that research data must be analysed in relation to the contexts in which they emerge, so the book proposes a research method based on the study of personal histories and stories, learning situations and intersubjective relationships to characterize the different information profiles of different information users. 

Adopting a multidisciplinary approach that combines contributions from educational research, psychology and information sciences, the authors first present a theoretical discussion to argue in favor of the sociocultural paradigm to study information literacy, then present their methodological proposal to observe informational competencies among higher education students, and finally present the results of an empirical study to identify different information literacy profiles among Latin American students and teachers.

Breaking with the hegemonic paradigm in the field, Information Literacy in Higher Education – A Sociocultural Perspective provides useful and innovative tools to researchers working in different areas of the social sciences, such as education, psychology, linguistics and information sciences.

Fabiola Cabra-Torres is a Professor at the Department of Education at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (PUJ, Bogotá- Colombia). She received her Ph.D. degree in Educational Innovation from the Universidad de Deusto (Spain). She co-authored three books: Las ciencias sociales y humanas en la actual Sociedad del conocimiento: Escenarios de indagación inter y transdisciplinar (2018); Competencias informacionales: Rutas de exploración en la enseñanza universitaria (2016); Nativos digitales; transiciones del formato impreso al digital (2013). Her research deals with information skills in the university. She has also published papers about teaching practices and learning assessment in the information society.

Gloria MarcialesVivas is a Professor in the field of Educational Psychology at the Department of Psychology at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (PUJ, Bogotá- Colombia). She received her Ph.D. degree in Philosophy and Education from the Universidad Complutense, Madrid (Spain). She is leader of the research group "Aprendizaje y sociedad de la información" ("Information Society and Learning"), which takes a multidisciplinary approach to information literacy and learning processes in digital natives. She co-authored three books: Las ciencias sociales y humanas en la actual Sociedad del conocimiento: Escenarios de indagación inter y transdisciplinar (2018); Competencias informacionales: Rutas de exploración en la enseñanza universitaria (2016); Nativos digitales; transiciones del formato impreso al digital (2013). She co-authored articles with her research group that include: "Profiling Information literacy in higher education: Traces of a local longitudinal study"; "Cyberbullying and Education: A Review of Emergent Issues in Latin America Research"; and "Comunicaciónelectrónica y cyberbullying: Temasemergentes para la investigación e intervenciónsocioeducativa".

Harold Castañeda-Peña teaches at Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, School of Science and Education. He has a Ph.D. in Education from Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. He has published studies of information literacies in Colombian and Latin American journals. His research interests include information literacy, gender and videogaming in the teaching of English.

Jorge Winston Barbosa-Chacón is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Regional Projection and Distance Education of the Universidad Industrial de Santander - UIS (Colombia). He is an electromechanical engineer from the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, specialist in university teaching and has a Master's in computer science from the UIS. His research areas include information skills, learning-teaching and assessment, distance learning and virtual education, and the systematization of educational experiences.

Leonardo Melo González is an Assistant Professor at the Information Science Department of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá, Colombia). He has a Master´s in Library and Information Science from the University of Texas at Austin and worked for ten years in the Dallas Public Library system. He has published studies of trends in information science in Latin America and information skills in university students, and a chapter in the book Competenciasinformacionales: Rutas de exploraciónen la enseñanzauniversitaria (2016). His research interests include electronic government, information skills and public libraries.

Oscar Gilberto Hernández Salamanca is an Assistant Professor at the School of Education at the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (Colombia). He studied psychology at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, has a Master´s in social science, with a major in educational policy (FLACSO, Argentina) and is studying for a PhD in psychology at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina). His interests revolve around school cultures, and teaching and learning processes from a sociocultural perspective.